So very many Americans have GERMAN ancestry! In fact not long after the United States became a country, there was a vote between ENGLISH and GERMAN as the official language and English won out!
Using Ellis Island database we can find many ancestors who came in STEERAGE but in fact many ancestors had better tickets and don't appear on that database. Sometimes the handwriting is really bad and you must find the people who came in when they left the port instead !
So what I do is check Ellis Island database FIRST but I go further. I use Ancestry or another genealogy database to check not only who was coming in on First and Second Class tickets from German ports to New York Harbor, I ALSO CHECK the records that ORIGINATE in GERMANY! Breman - Hamburg these were DEEP WATER PORTS great for DOCKING A STEAM SHIP!
The Germans have long been excellent at keeping records. YOU MAY BE A LITTLE CHALLENGED to read the German but you may also find yourself reading early American records in GERMAN TOO!
Showing posts with label German-American. Show all posts
Showing posts with label German-American. Show all posts
10 June 2010
YOUR EUROPEAN ANCESTORS WERE PROBABLY SURVIVORS OF THE BLACK DEATH
CHANCES ARE VERY GOOD, if you are from European ancestry, that your genes are survivors of the BLACK DEATH - The Plague. I just read a fascinating article in the travel section of the LOS ANGELES TIMES, a paper copy, about tourism to the OBERAMMERGAU area, for the purposes of the yearly passion play, which has been put on every 10 years since the town promised God it would do so, if it were spared the Black Death.
According to SUSAN SPANO, the journalist who wrote the article called IN THE ALPS, A SAVING GRACE, which appeared in the Sunday June 7th edition, "Before the first Passion was staged and the plague abated, almost 100 villagers -died, relatively few compared with southern Germany as a whole, where the BLACK DEATH killed more than a million people.
According to SUSAN SPANO, the journalist who wrote the article called IN THE ALPS, A SAVING GRACE, which appeared in the Sunday June 7th edition, "Before the first Passion was staged and the plague abated, almost 100 villagers -died, relatively few compared with southern Germany as a whole, where the BLACK DEATH killed more than a million people.
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